A Recommendation for Readers: A Petition Demonstrating Catholic Support for Marriage Equality

Finally, this Sunday morning, I want to draw readers' attention to a valuable initiative about which Terry Weldon blogged this past week at his Queering the Church blog.

This is an online petition organized by Tom Luce to inform the U.S. Catholic bishops and President Obama that many of us who are Catholic support the Obama administration's decision not to continue defending the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  As the posting I just uploaded before this one notes, in the past week, Bishop William Lori, who is heading a new committee formed by the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Conference to defend a religious liberty supposedly now under attack, testified before Congress. 

In his testimony, Lori echoed statements made previously by the USCCB president Timothy Dolan, which maintain that the religious liberty of Catholics is under attack as the Obama administration refuses to defend DOMA, and characterizes DOMA as discriminatory.  A majority of American Catholics do not agree with the U.S. bishops about this issue.  A majority of American Catholics support the right of same-sex couples to civil marriage or civil unions, and regard the attempt to bar gay couples from the right of marriage as discriminatory.

The online petition to which I provide a link above is your choice to make your voice heard.  If you think this is a worthwhile venture, I'd strongly encourage you to sign and circulate the petition to members of your various networks.  Thanks for considering this request.

P.S. If you go to to the petition page and see the number of signatories at any given time, you apparently aren't seeing a "real-time" count or list of those who have signed.  The site updates the list in increments of ten, it appears--and not immediately, even in that case, it seems.